By Peter Navarro | RealClearMarkets | April 3, 2026
Today’s jobs report is another reminder that the American labor market is a lot stronger than the professional pessimists want to admit. In March, the economy added 178,000 jobs, crushing consensus expectations that had been clustered around roughly 60,000 to 65,000. Even better, private payrolls did the heavy lifting, and the unemployment rate edged down to 4.3 percent.
That is not the picture of an economy in retreat. It is the picture of an economy that still has productive muscle, even after months of media warnings about tariffs, inflation, and looming recession.